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Re. Buffet or Sit Down Dinner???? - Page 2

post #31 of 40
2/9/10 at 10:22am
not happening around here.
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post #32 of 40
2/9/10 at 10:48am
It's a question of taste -- not only the guests' but the caterer's as well. I never had any interest in catering for more than 50 or so. I'd do it for an established client, if that's what she wanted; but there were certainly people who were better suited to it.

The idea of doing 5,500 people in a half an hour is way too much like work.

BDL
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post #33 of 40
2/9/10 at 1:08pm
5500, that is a HUGE number......
I prefer 150-300.
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post #34 of 40
2/9/10 at 1:30pm
Thread Starter 
BDL
Look at it this way if you only make a profit of $5.00 pp after everything said and done you pocket $27500.00 not bad .How many of these do you have to do in a year? You dont have to be great, you just have to be nuts!
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post #35 of 40
2/9/10 at 6:24pm

"Family style service"

family style service has the same "all-you-can-eat" issues as a buffet, along with the higher cost of srevers bring food to the table. With plated meals YOU control portion and plate costs effectively. no matter whitch way you go your contract needs to break down price per person by the number of gaurenteed guests (IE 10~50=$A, 50~100=$B, 100~200=$C...and so on). usually one can produce more volume with less labor% dollars and be more porfitable. the lower the count, the higher the price.
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post #36 of 40
2/9/10 at 7:34pm
Money's nice; but for me it was all about the look on their faces after the first taste. I just couldn't do that in large volume. I think you know that one of the many things I respect about you is that I know you can. Ditto shroom.

BDL
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post #37 of 40
2/10/10 at 2:27pm
WRONG about family-style.

At a buffet people assume that there is an endless supply of food.

Just like at a Thanksgiving dinner at home, people know that the 8 peices of chicken are for the 8 people at the table. It works every time. People are sharing the food. (of course you need to choose a caterer who will plan and charge for the right about to begin with).
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post #38 of 40
2/10/10 at 4:13pm
Thread Starter 
You are quite right . To me every bride looked the same, every face the same. My kick was after it was all over asking myself " How the (H ) did we pull that off". I started out doing the little fancy ones ,but somehow got roped into doing these big gigs. I think because no one else wanted to do them or they new better. Example Valentines eve We have 600 Valentines day 300 Valentine Monday Ladies lunch 500 Chicken Crepes all scratch. This is my last year, I said this before but this time I mean it" Enough Already."
P/S when I was in NY we did on premise, 5 Bar Mitz. Sat Am/ 2 Bar mitz 4 weddings Sat pm. Sun am 4 Bar mitz 2 weddings Sun Pm 6 weddings. We had 7 ballrooms. Each held at least 150. It was like coordinating a 3 ring circus every weekend.
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post #39 of 40
2/10/10 at 4:19pm
I do a lot of both, plated and buffet, depending on the facilities, budget, client's perceptions and wants. For the budget jobs, we often do a "plattered" service.

Plattered service, is where we platter the allowed food for each table, on a shared platter. The patrons then pass the platter around amongst themselves. We do have to allow for a little more food than for a plated service, but much less than a stand up buffet.

We can run this for 100 guests, with about 2 chefs, and 4-6 waiters, who will also refill drinks to the table, rather than to each individual. Depending on the number of guests, we can generally run this at a cost of about AUD$50 per person, for 3 courses.
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post #40 of 40
2/10/10 at 4:28pm

5500 guests.

We've done some gigs for up to 5000 people. The only way to run this effectively, was to do a plattered service, as I described earlier, and placing bowls of salad on each table immediately prior to the main.

We also had to run it out of 4 different satellite kitchens, to get the food out in 30 minutes. Each kitchen had radios for communication, a head chef and kitchen hands etc..

For this volume, we had to buy most of the food in pre-made, we simply didn't have the facilities to make and store that volume.

My key philosophy then was:
"stress early, and avoid the rush later"
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